Sheraa; Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center website

The Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center (Sheraa) is a non-profit government organization which supports entrepreneurs, building businesses that serve as engines for socio-economic development. Sheraa cultivates change-makers out of young talent, nurturing an entrepreneurial spirit that celebrates infinite possibility, and building a thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem essentially from scratch.

We worked closely with the clients team to create a new digital home for the business.

The business had out grown the site and Sheraa felt that they needed a website they can grow with and be proud to showcase.

The site is in 2 languages and is fully responsive. We look forward to a long term relationship with Sheraa, helping them and their start-ups.https://sheraa.ae/

Design Therapy popup

Do you have a brand, design or digital challenge you are struggling with?

Leading agency Maek Design will be running a Design Therapy pop-up at Dubai Design Week offering free consultations to help you work through your challenges, and move you closer to the right design/brand/digital solution(s).

Each consultations will last 10-30 mins, depending on the size of the challenge you’re looking to solve. Participants can apply for a consultation appointment by registering at the pop-up, or turn up and wait.

Saturday 18th Nov

10am – 3pm

Registration before or on the day. Email us on info@maek.co.uk to pre book your time slot.

The Sukhothai Hotel Bangkok website

Sector: Hospitality

Project Type:Web designWeb development

UI/UXContent Management SystemCreative direction

The Sukhothai Hotel is a 5 star hotel situated in the center of Bangkok steps away from the business and entertainment districts. Besides being a luxury hotel, the Sukhothai offers exquisite, award-winning Thai cuisine from various regions of the country as well as Classic Italian cuisine in 7 uniquely designed dining experiences.

Maek worked closely with the Sukhothai team to develop a website separate from the main hotel website showcasing the various dining experiences available to guests and Bangkok residents.

The existing restaurant booking system was somewhat confusing to users and reservations spread amongst various staff via email and sms. Our goal was to create a website that allowed users to easily access each restaurant, browse menus, learn about specials and celebrity chefs and to easily make a booking from any device and feed this data into a centralized restaurant booking system.

As the Hotel has established brand guidelines, we had to work within these parameters, yet had flexibility in terms of color palette, layout and typography. The result is a website that fits seamlessly with their existing website yet acts as a standalone experience for those solely interested in the hotel’s dining options.

Mid way through the project, a decision was made to redesign and revamp one of the restaurants. Once complete, the website will be updated to reflect these changes and is scheduled to launch early December 2017.

Rock House Sliders brand creation

SectorFood & Beverage

Rock House Sliders came to us with a vision – to be the best burger brand in the Middle East. The burger market in the region is highly competitive, so we needed to create an identity that stood out from everyone else. The brand design we used felt instantly recognisable – a brand that looked like it had a strong heritage, history. And with a great product to back it up, of course.

While the RHS brand has only been live for a few months, it’s got off to a great start – it’s now the number one ordered burger in Kuwait – well on the way to world domination. Rockin’!

Stackitevents brand creation

STACK is an event platform that allows people to engage with LEGO® experiences.

STACK is a 4-day event for LEGO® fans. This event is at the heart of the brand’s year-round community engagement, and will feature creative zones, games, shops, and food and beverages.

We created a simple identity in the classic LEGO® colours of red and yellow, inspired by the LEGO® brick to form an S shape. We followed this up with a library of marketing material – this included stationery, internal communications and a website to sell tickets for the forthcoming event.

We’ll be continuing to build the STACK brand over the next few months, as well as designing event graphics for the launch. Keep up to date on their website.

Digital Partner

Art Jameel is a not-for-profit organisation that supports artists and creative communities.

Maek worked closely with the Art Jameel team to help craft a humble website, allowing them to communicate with the global art community.

This is the first stage of the site, with updates happening later in the year. The new centre in Dubai is aimed to finish in 2018, where the site will be able to support the venue fully with information on exhibitions, events and in house residences.

Snappcard brand creation and digital partner

Snapp came to us with an outdated identity, an app that required a redesign and redevelopment and with no marketing collateral. While most loyalty app competitors tend to mimic printed loyalty cards, we needed to find a new, more scalable approach to the interface and the brand. It needed to be flexible enough to work for small and large vendors alike, as well as for the consumers who use it daily.

Rather than replicate existing convention, we took a different approach. The icon we designed for the branding is unique, colourful and fresh. The app logo can also be broken up and used on other marketing collateral. The app’s interface design features a circular graphic mechanic for the points – a system scalable with any vendor. We felt collecting points was much more fun and interesting for the user, too.

Snapp is going global and growing month on month –- 200k users

- 700+ merchants

- 2.5m+ Snapps

- $2m worth of rewards given out

- 50k feedback collected Snapp can be found in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Germany. You can download the app for Android and iPhone.

TV.AE brand creation

TV.AE is a new type of content-on-demand platform. They approached us to design and develop its brand identity. TV.AE’s aim is to provide original and curated content in an engaging multiscreen video experience. This means less buffering, less pixilation, and maximum performance even at peak rates on web, Android and iOS devices across the entire MENA region.

Our design strategy focused on helping the client understand the visual direction in which the identity would be heading. We took the client step by step along this design development journey, which helped them to get buy-in from all stakeholders involved.

The identity itself centred around a bespoke logo type and striking colours, with a fun and unpredictable quality. As the target demographic was relatively young, it was important to make the brand work as hard as possible to grab consumers’ attention.

As well as the identity, we developed all marketing collateral and digital assets for future use. The TV.AE brand launched at Lynx 2016 and was very well received.

Taqado Mexican Kitchen Website

Taqado is one of the fastest food and beverage concepts in the UAE. Growing to over 11 stores within 3 years and establishing itself as the best Mexican food in the region.

The branding was rich in colour, typography and characters, so we wanted a site that can let those elements work well together.

With our experience in F&B digital work, we created a site that was very easy to understand, allowing users to access information easily while they were on the go. The site had to work in 2 languages, english and for the local market.

The site has given good foundations to Taqado to build on from this, with more stores opening this year, we will be working closely with them to create an even richer online experience for their customers.

Stackitevents promo video

SectorEvents and Entertainment

Project typeStoryboard creationStory tellingSoundAnimation

We love projects that don't have boundaries.

Our friends at Stack are busy building one of the hottest events of the year and needed our help to design, create and animate a promo video. We created this cool promo animation, which can be used on their site and on social channels.

Just click the image to play and get stacked!

Hopfest campaign 2015

SectorFood & Beverages

Project TypeCampaign DesignGraphic DesignDesign StrategyInstore promotions and point of sale

To celebrate the 11th annual – Dubai Hop Fest at Irish village, African + Eastern wanted to support the event through a targeted online campaign and competition. The competition was part of a wider retail and online campaign, which allowed 4 people to win “The Ultimate Hop Fest Experience”.

The competition was to be supported with a series of social media, email communications and print media that will work in tandem with established marketing plans for the event.

As a long term digital and campaign partner for A+E, Maek created a simple design for the campaign, that can be applied across a variety of materials and that stood out in store.

The campaign impacted sales of the products, showing that people wanted to create their own 6 pack from the beers on offer. This in turn supported the event which made it even popular this year.

Saso brand creation & Packaging design

SectorFood and Beverage

Project TypeBrandingGraphic DesignPackagingMarketing Material

When Saso came to us, they were already an established player in the Kuwait home delivery concept market. However, competitors came in and, over time started to catch up. The brand began to feel dated – the client decided it was time to reboot it.

Our rebrand used famous food quotes – we felt these would resonate with people, as well as representing the food you’d be able to eat. The quotes were a major part of the packaging, and helped the brand to communicate – and re-establish itself – with today’s modern audience.

Truelovecards - in-retail product

SectorRetail

Project TypeDesignProduct Development

We were frustrated by the lack of quality cards on the market. We felt that what’s out there didn’t connect with today’s digitally-engaged, socially active consumers. We wanted to change that by creating cards that were more enticing to these consumers – quirky, funny, and with a hint of digital humour.

We based each card on a colour, a statement, and some playful, subtle illustrations. We’ve created series (10 birthday cards, six Valentine’s Day cards) as well as individual event offerings (new baby cards, Mother’s Day cards and Father’s Day cards).

The cards took off, and we picked up some great press locally in What’s On and Good Magazine. They’re on sale in Dubai at Virgin Megastore, the Rose Leaf Café, Spill the Bean Café and the Make Business Hub, and we’ll be selling them in Jeddah soon too. If you’d like to sell Truelovecards in your shop or café, please get in touch with us here.

GamePlaySport brand creation and digital platform

We created GamePlaySport as part of our Maek Ventures work. It’s an online platform that aggregates sporting classes in Dubai. It does two things: it helps you discover sport around you in Dubai, and helps sports club managers to promote their clubs. Club managers and event owners can upload and manage their own page and use the platform as a hub to schedule all their events.

Our aim was to create something scalable, responsive and intuitive to use. The branding needed to work globally, to make market entry as easy as possible. We developed a full user interaction toolkit, which helped the development team build and customise pages in a quick, fluid way.

Muncherie packaging design

SectorFood & Beverages

Project TypeBrand DesignPackaging

Muncherie was a new brand offering healthy raw treats – a competitive marketplace. When they came to us, they had no logo and no branding strategy – just a name and a collection of conceptual products they were about to enter the market with.

We addressed this by creating a fun, playful identity based around the idea of a bitten cookie. We supported this through the use of simple illustration and clean typography and packaging.

Smirnoff – #bestnightever campaign

SectorFood & Beverages

Project TypeCampaign DesignGraphic DesignDesign Strategy

Smirnoff came to us wanting to give its fans their #bestnightever – a prize of a VIP night to dinner and a club in Dubai. Our challenge was to come up with a campaign that encouraged users on social channels to enter the competition in a visual way.

We kept it simple, but effective – our campaign asked entrants (users?) to upload an image of them on their best night out with their friends. They’d upload it via their mobile or computer on Facebook, and whoever got the most likes or votes won the prize.

The competition had almost 200 entrants, with over 250 ‘likes’, more than 150 shares, 2.7k visits and 1.2k votes.

Restronaut brand creation and digital platform

Restronaut is one of our Maek Ventures projects – it grew to become one of Dubai’s most talked-about social platforms. Restronaut connects like-minded people over dinner at the city’s restaurants and venues. We call it ‘making social social again’

We created an identity that played on the themes of space, discovery and food – the brand name being a play on ‘astronaut’ and ‘restaurant’, and the imagery followed a similarly fun and playful fashion.

Restronaut has 50 partner venues, and has an engaged community of over 9,000 users. 345 dinners have been hosted and over 3,100 dinner covers have been booked. It’s had some pretty good press, locally and internationally – see here, here and here.

Unfortunately due to not being able to secure funding, the company chose to shut down, and all partners to pursue other opportunities.

Movie Cocktails Campaign

SectorFood & Beverage

Project typeCampaign DesignGraphic DesignDesign Strategy

Our client (African + Eastern) wanted a campaign that would run alongside the 2015 Oscars – something that would engage users as well as subtly promote its brands’ products.

We created a campaign based around classic movie drinks – most people can name a drink associated with a well-known movie they’ve seen. We came up with six posters. The drink was the star of the show, along with the ingredients and how to make it. We published these images on Instagram and Facebook in the run-up to the Oscars awards ceremony.

Our campaign was intuitive and engaging – it resonated with its audience, and in turn grew the African + Eastern Facebook community.

National Pavilion website creation

SectorArts

Project typeWeb DesignContent Management SystemResponsive Web Design

Having recently rebranded, the National Pavilion approached us to create a website based on their new visual direction. More specifically, they were after a responsive platform that could grow with its user base and marketing strategies in the long term.

Our website design incorporated all the elements of the new brand, was fully responsive, but most importantly has been designed to last – it can scale with the business. The layout is contemporary, and puts it in a similar league to its European counterparts.

helping Street Child to fight ebola

SectorCharity

Project typeWeb DesignResponsive Web DesignCampaign Design

In an era with so many charities around, it’s increasingly difficult to get out to the consumer and ask for donations. How do you stand out from the norm? How can you be distinctive when so many others are essentially asking the same thing? This was the challenge Street Child faced on a daily basis. While the media life cycle meant interest in the Ebola crisis started to fade from public view, there was still work to be done. Street Child’s work involves helping people in Sierra Leone and Libera before, during and after the outbreak – and they needed to be persistent in putting that message across.

We decided our campaign should do two things – the tone needed to be different from before, but so did the task of asking for money. We wanted to do something that felt new and intuitive. During the festive season, people are under pressure to buy presents for friends and family that they often don’t need. Our Pass the Presents website allowed people to choose the present you don’t want to get for Christmas, so you could ask friends and family to donate instead. It also allowed you to choose the present you don’t want to buy for your loved one, so you could make an equivalent donation instead. Small donations can make a huge difference to Ebola victims – this innovative approach helped Street Child stand out from the crowd in a crowded sector.

http://passthepresents.org/

Daimler Middle East

We were briefed to create a multilingual hand-raiser for the launch of the new Mercedes E-Class in the region. It needed to work on mobile devices, as well as aid local dealers in following up on online customer interest and booking test drives.

We designed a website that supported the offline campaign and that was fully responsive in English and Arabic. The site’s user experience was engaging – it secured almost 600 sign-ups in three months, met the client’s key performance indicators, and helped to launch the wider E-Class campaign.

sheikh mohammed centre for cultural understanding

SectorCultural

Maek Design are the current design partner for the SMCCU. We create all of their marketing solutions. Our aim is to increase the centre’s customers and exposure. We look forward to a long relationship with our client over the years.Maek digital are the current design partner for the centre. We create all marketing solutions, that helps the centre get more customers and exposure. We look forward to a long relationship with the SMCCU over the years.

Make Business Hub brand partner

SectorLifestyle

Project TypeInstallation DesignGraphic DesignDigital DesignBranding

Make Business Hub has several incentives and events throughout the year, each of them requiring their own unique look and feel. We’ve worked on projects with them that range from installation design, print, branding and digital, among others. We approach each brief with a fresh perspective, helping to keep the marketing material current and engaging for its audience.

Our client: "Maek take on our relatively simple projects and translate them into something impactful and engaging!"

African + Eastern digital partner

Over the last four decades, African + Eastern has grown from a small trading company to the largest importer and distributor of the world’s leading alcohol brands in the Middle East and Arabian Gulf. Maek were selected to be their digital partners and redesign their entire online global presences.

Our website design for African + Eastern was simple to navigate and made it easy to search and filter different alcoholic drinks. We also created compelling content so that users would keep coming back to the site. Our client was happy with the result: “Maek Digital designed a site that was bold, simple and easy to use. Well done Maek.”

Emerging Circle brand creation and digital partner

SectorBanking and Investment

Project TypeBrandingDigital DesignWeb Design

Emerging Circle is a startup based in the Middle East. They kept SMEs get investment to grow their businesses. They approached us to design their identity – something that looked trustworthy, was instantly recognisable and connected with its target market. On top of that was their digital platform, which needed to look like an app, be easy to use, and scale as the business grows over time.

The idea behind the logo was something that would work typographically, but also be its own icon without the full company name. We used the negative space within the two title letters – this helped with recognition, and is also flexible as it can be used in different sizes across different media.

The company’s CTO, Farris Massoudi, said: “Maek’s work has surpassed anything I have previously seen. They have been core to the user experience, design and conceptualisation of our website. They have an unsurpassed understanding of branding and current market trends while being completely original and unique in their work. There is no other design firm I would rather work with and there is nobody whose quality of work is higher.”

Djuice - giving the urban youth of Pakistan a voice

Challengein 2010 Djuice wanted to re-invent their online solutions, and reach out to the urban youth of Pakistan like never before.

ApproachMaek partnered up with Isobar MENA and scoped out their target market, developed a digital strategy that informed all UX, design and front end development, to produce a digital platform that could compete with the European and Amercian markets.

ResultsDjuice are now empowered with thinking, tools and a digital brand that can leap frog them to the #1 position in Pakistan.

Nokia Ramadan Campaign

We were tasked with increasing Nokia followers on the Nokia_UAE Facebook page, As well as increasing Ovi app downloaded in the lower Gulf. The client also wanted to raise money for local charities and increase user engagement during Ramadan.

In partnership with the Isobar MENA agency, we created a Ramadan calendar that engaged with its users daily during the month. Nokia donated 5AED to charity for every person who installed the calendar. Every day, the user would receive a digital gift online – a video, a wallpaper, a recipe for iftar, a tip of the day, and several others. Each gift would come with an Ovi application.

The campaign had 21,000 Facebook followers – more than five times the number of followers before the launch. There were also 10,000 active users daily, with each user returning two to three times each day.

Ciroc – Ultra Premium Vodka animation

SectorFood & Beverages

Project TypeGraphic DesignAnimation

We were commissioned by African + Eastern to create an animated video for one of its top-selling brands. The video would be shown to the marketing team at its end-of-year meeting, showcasing the team’s efforts and success in the sector that year. The video was full of visual imagery and featured animated data about the brand in that year. It showcased market growth, event images and the brand’s product portfolio. It inspired the team to reach even bigger goals the following year.

Dubai Lynx

Dubai Lynx came to us with the challenge of getting people attending their four-day festival. They also wanted attendees to mix with people outside of their normal contacts, as they already recognised that most attendees only networked with people they already knew. Our client wanted to make networking fun and worthwhile to everyone attending, so they could get as much out of the festival as possible.

We partnered with Isobar MENA and created a networking game for the festival. When the user registered on the Lynx Connect app, they created a unique festival avatar that makes their contact details available for networking. The app worked on mobile, enabling people on different handsets to use it. The aim was to collect other avatars by entering their unique ID code (see mobile designs). When you entered the code, you’d gain that person’s contact details and avatar Think of it like a sticker book – the more you networked with others, the more avatars you’d collect. At the end of the festival, the three most active users won prizes. And it was useful after the event – everyone who registered was able to download all the contact they’d made for future use. It was successful – over 800 of the 1,500 people attending the festival registered with the app, and the winner collected over 200 contacts over the four days.

Ferrari World Abu Dhabi

SectorEntertainment

Project TypeUX DesignWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentMultilingual

Ferrari came to us with the challenge of showcasing their commemorative ticket, and encouraging users to purchase it online. The imagery of the ticket itself was strong, and did all the selling, so our campaign focused on allowing users to look closely at the gift box itself and buy the ticket. The result: a strong visual website which is on brand and showcases the product in an engaging way.

AM•PM

SectorLuxury Sanitary ware

Project TypeUX DesignWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentMultilingual

AM•PM are a brand that comprises collaborative work of the leading Luxury sanitary ware manufacturers around the world. They commissioned us to design and develop the company’s online portal, informing customers about the latest ranges and helping them to find the nearest AM•PM distributor. We wanted to combine easy access to products with a different, distinctive way for the user to navigate the site’s content. From the homepage, the user could choose to view a collection according to their mood at the time – this tied in well with the brand’s idea that each collection is inspired by a human emotion.

Style Passport

SectorFashion & Beauty

Project TypeBrand IdentityUX DesignWeb DesignWeb DevelopmentECRM

We were asked to create a new brand identity and website for Style Passport, a new online fashion and beauty boutique whose USP is being a destination-themed shopping experience. Our aims for the branding were to come up with something timeless, authoritative and colourful.

Most main fashion websites are structured around one template and are predominantly monocrhomatic. We wanted to do something different. The end result is a refreshingly different approach to online fashion and beauty shopping, supported by well-selected products and strong editorial content.

"When launching our new business we wanted to make sure that our design partners embraced the project with as much passion as we did, while delivering within a short timeframe. Each Maek team member did everything that they could to ensure that not only did the business launch on time but that we achieved the design and brand goals that we set out originally. We found them to be a creative, hard-working and dedicated team!"